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There was a time in this country when public school teachers could focus on teaching
the basics. Today, unfortunately, they are all too often preoccupied with accommodating the
silly concerns pervading our society.

To what concerns do I refer? Oh, those such as banning the innocent children's games of
dodge ball, cops and robbers, musical chairs, steal the bacon and tag. You heard me right --
it's not just the allegedly sadistic and violent game of dodge ball that schools are trying to
outlaw.

Call me nostalgic for my childhood if you wish -- for the days of Beaver Cleaver and
Andy Griffith -- but I long for the times when cockamamie ideas didn't pass for reasonable.
Bring back the days when kids were allowed to have some harmless fun without certain
hair-brained, social engineers coming unglued. Dodge ball is an easy target for the sourpusses
because it involves students -- heaven forbid -- trying to hit other students with a dastardly
rubber ball. And at least once in recorded history, one of those children was hurt.

For the record, we played the game all the time in Coach Russell's PE class at Franklin school,
and I can't remember a single injury, even among the girls who played with us boys. Sure, when
the ball hit you it stung slightly, but that was part of the fun of it. Real injuries were much
more likely to occur in touch football or softball, which ought to tell you how likely they
were.

So, under the pretense that dodge ball is too dangerous, there is an increasing trend among
school districts across the country to ban it. But this seems more of a convenient excuse, as
does the objection that the game provides a poor cardiovascular workout. Give me a break;
softball involves more standing around than movement, and many other games cannot be said to be
cardiovascular, being more anaerobic then aerobic.

Reading below the headlines we find that other reasons are motivating those who seek to purge
these schoolyard games. One major reason, according to the Los Angeles Times, "is that the game
can hurt children's feelings."

How does dodge ball cause this irreversible emotional trauma? Well, it is a contest of
elimination where the last player to avoid being hit wins. So, like the perilous games of
cutthroat in billiards and the heartless musical chairs, dodge ball is a game of exclusion -- a
capital crime in these times of politically correct inclusion.

Diane Farr, a curriculum specialist in Austin, Texas, explained that her school district
implemented the ban to satisfy a panel of professors, students and parents who wanted to
"preserve the rights and dignity" of all students in the district. So dodge ball is a dignity
thief? Of course, claims Farr. "What we have seen is that it does not make students feel good
about themselves."

There's more. According to one anti-dodge ball crusader, "at its base, the game encourages the
strong to victimize the weak. … Schools preach the values of harmony, community and
cooperation. But then those same schools let the big kids loose to see if they can hit the
skinny nerd in the head with a hard, red rubber ball." (Have you noticed that no one ever
sticks up for fat nerds?)

Educators also fear that dodge ball is not only violent, but that it and other games convey "a
message of violence." "With Columbine and all the violence that we are having, we have to be
careful with how we teach our children," says Farr. They actually want us to believe that there
is a logical continuum between dodge ball (and cops and robbers) and student on student
massacres.

The Washington Times recently detailed a litany of examples, including: a threatened suspension
in California of a 9-year-old for playing cops and robbers, two New York second-graders
suspended and criminally charged with making terrorist threats for pointing paper guns and
saying, "I'm going to kill you"; and a 9-year-old New Jersey boy suspended and ordered to
undergo psychological evaluation because he told another student that he planned to shoot a
classmate with spitballs.

These ideas are ludicrous on their face, but there is obviously something else at work here.
While the secularists are paranoid lest any vestige of Western values remain in the classroom,
they are eager to impose their own values at school.

They tell us they want to promote harmony, community and inclusiveness when what they really
want is to push the notion of pacifism and discourage our traditions of competition and rugged
individualism.

Maybe it's time to urge some of these educators, instead of the students, to seek psychological
evaluations.

David Limbaugh, a columnist and attorney a practicing in Cape
Girardeau, Mo., is the author of the just-released
exposé about corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice
Department, "Absolute Power." Send your comments to him by clicking here.